Arts in the Valley and Beyond

Warm Colors, Intense Emotion, Raku Boxes and Bronze Sculptures

Well, the year ended much as it began and as it was lived for art and artists in the valley and beyond.Image Much of the last two days of the year were spent for many local artists in the process of changing out art and preparing for the January shows and First Friday events at local galleries.

Not the least of which is Two Rivers Gallery in Wenatchee, which will be featuring the colorful art of local artist Martha Flores. Martha hails from warmer climes and her artwork shows it in the warmth of her subject matter and the choice and depth of her colors, which even when using ‘cool’ colors exude a warmth that one just has to see in person to grasp and appreciate. The large scale of many of her oil paintings serves to draw one in to her world of color and imagination. While the intimacy of the smaller water colors which often portray individuals with a depth of emotion (particularly in the eyes) that causes one to pause and wonder at the inner world of the subject. Her sculptures of a ballerina ‘Dreaming of Bolshoi’, a women in repose ‘Melancholia’, and others manage to convey a depth of feeling that would seem to be hard to express in a cold hard medium such as bronze. But, there it is.

While installing my own art at Two Rivers Gallery yesterday, Martha Flores and I had the pleasure of meeting an artist from Quincy named Moises Nepolitano, who happened to be in the gallery and was in fact registering as a new member of the gallery. As it turned out he has a piece in the new Quincy Library, which many of you may know has just been built anew and is going big on art from local artists.
The folks out in Quincy are very proud of their new showpiece and tell me that their new library, designed by Architect and artist Brad Brisbine from the Wenatchee firm of MJ Neal Associates, will nearly triple the size and offerings of our current library. It will include a multi-purpose meeting room, available after library hours, a sun-lit quiet reading area, a teen area, a special room designated for children's books and activities and space dedicated for twice the present number of computers. Each of these areas will have art expressing themes appropriate to the design and nature of each area.

As some readers of my other blog which can be read at: http://rodandmarthaartblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/well-its-been-wonderful-two-weeks-for.html may recall Pamela and Marvin Barrow of Quincy picked up a sculpture by Martha Flores for the new Library just before the Christmas holiday. Since returning from Christmas out of state we were happy to learn that the art committee of the Quincy Library is commissioning a larger sculpture from Martha Flores… the theme of which will be disclosed later.